But I'm not clear where we go with that conversation: It feels like a never-ending cycle of accusation and defense and less about long-lasting solutions.

After all, Sterling is invested in not being seen as a racist and saving his business. When a debate becomes about whether one person is racist, what are the rest of us supposed to do with that? If we want to have a more useful discussion on how to move beyond racism in America, there are more productive ways to do it.

First, we have to resist concluding that condemning racist slurs is all that is required to end discrimination.

Second, to achieve racial equity, we need to be able to do three things: talk explicitly about race; focus on the impact of policies and practices and the intentions behind them; and support power-building in marginalized communities.

Racism has evolved over the past 50 years, and our collective understanding of what constitutes justice, how discrimination functions and how to best address it needs updating.

Racial bias is often hidden, unintentional and systemic. That means that it is actually possible to create racist impact, even if there's no easily identifiable racist behind the curtain.

The notion that racism is always intentional, individual and overt feeds the false assumption that colorblindness is then the appropriate solution.

But the absence of apparent, or even coded, hostility does not necessarily indicate the presence of fairness.

That's why we have to be able to ask explicit racial questions. Rather than avoiding racial difference, we should engage it, with the goal of creating actual equity in our workplaces, schools and all the other spaces in which we spend our lives.

In the food industry, for example, there is widely accepted racial hierarchy in high-end restaurants.

Anyone walking into a three-star restaurant can see that often, the people who have speaking parts at the front of the house are white, while those working for lower wages in the back of the house are employees of color. The Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROCUnited) has documented such segregation in New York City, New Orleans and Miami.

Atlanta Hawks controlling owner Bruce Levenson announced he will sell the team in light of an offensive email he sent. Levenson is not the first sports team owner to face the consequences of his actions:

The NBA's suspension and $2.5-million fine for Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling sent shockwaves through the sports world.

Bleacher Report has dubbed Mark Cuban the "King of NBA fines. The notoriously vocal Dallas Mavericks owner has been forced to pay more than $1.8 million in fines since he bought the team in 2000, many of them for colorful language and criticism of referees.

Former Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott was suspended from Major League Baseball in 1993 and 1996 for several controversial comments, among them racial epithets against players. In a 1996 interview, she said this about Adolf Hitler: "Everybody knows that he was good at the beginning, but he just went too far." She was forced to sell her controlling interest of the Reds in 1999.

Before the announcement about Sterling's suspension, Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor was the only owner suspended in the NBA in 68 years. The league suspended Taylor in 2000 for a season after the Timberwolves made a secret deal with a star player to circumvent salary cap rules. Now, Taylor is chairman of the NBA board of governors, which Commissioner Adam Silver has asked to vote on stripping Sterling's ownership of the Clippers.

The NFL suspended San Francisco 49ers owner Eddie DeBartolo Jr. for his role in a racketeering scandal tied to riverboat casino licenses. DeBartolo pleaded guilty in 1998 to felony charges of failing to report an extortion case, according to Bleacher Report. By 2000 he was forced to cede control of the team to his sister.

As former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt's bitter divorce became a cloud over the franchise, his financial turmoil forced Major League Baseball to take over the day-to-day operations of the team in 2011. League Commissioner Bud Selig accused McCourt of "looting" the club of $190 million to fund an extravagant lifestyle. McCourt filed for bankruptcy later that year. During bankruptcy proceedings, McCourt agreed to sell the team under a bidding process.

The late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball for making illegal campaign contributions to Richard Nixon in 1974. He was banned for life in 1990 after paying a gambler $40,000 to get damaging information about a player, but Major League Baseball reinstated him three years later.

The NBA said Miami Heat owner Micky Arison had been fined in 2011 for posting about the league's collective bargaining process on Twitter. The amount of the fine was not disclosed, but several media reports said it was $500,000.

The NBA slapped Aubrey McClendon, partial owner of the Oklahoma City Thunder, with a $250,000 fine in 2007 after he told an Oklahoma newspaper that he hoped to move the team, then known as the Seattle SuperSonics, to Oklahoma.

The NBA fined former Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss $25,000 and suspended him for two games in 2007 after his conviction on a misdemeanor drunk driving charge. Buss died in 2013.

The outspoken CNN founder and former Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner was suspended for a year in 1977 for negotiating a deal with a player who was under contract to play for the San Francisco Giants.

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

Team owners behaving badly

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After a recording of Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist remarks was released in April 2014, he was fined and banned from NBA games for life. But he's not the only well-known figure who has served as a lighting rod for discussion on race and identity.

The Washington Redskins team name and logo got heightened visibility when President Barack Obama and high-profile sportscasters Bob Costas and Christine Brennan spoke out against it in 2013. Team owner Dan Snyder insists the team's name is part of a tradition and is "not an issue."

Rancher Cliven Bundy made news in 2014 for his battle with the federal government and his comments that implied blacks would have been better off in slavery. In an interview with CNN's "New Day," he said he is not a racist.

TV personality and chef Paula Deen lost her sponsors and her Food Network show in 2013 after she admitted to use of the "n-word" and botched an apology. A racial discrimination charge against her was later dropped, and she is in the midst of a comeback, as she continues to spur controversy with her comments.

Actor LL Cool J and musician Brad Paisley collaborated on the song "Accidental Racist" that was largely panned by critics for being too simplistic in how it discussed American racial history.

Protesters hold signs in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 10, 2012, ahead of the high court's hearing of arguments on Fisher V. University of Texas at Austin. In 2013, the court ruled on the constitutionality of the school's consideration of race in admissions.

Miley Cyrus made twerking a household term after her controversial performance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards with Robin Thicke. Critics accused her of appropriating hip-hop culture and outraged parents whose children once knew her for her kid-friendly Hannah Montana character.

Nina Davuluri became the first winner of Indian descent when she won the 2014 Miss America Competition and drew headlines when her win spurred racist reactions online.

Sebastien De La Cruz, known as San Antonio's Little Mariachi, sang the national anthem before an NBA finals game between the San Antonio Spurs and the Miami Heat in 2013. When some questioned his citizenship and mariachi outfit, it sparked defense of the young singer from notables such as actress Eva Longoria.

In 2013, stop-and-frisk became a major issue in the New York mayoral campaign, and additional discussion was prompted with the George Zimmerman trial and movies such as "Fruitvale Station" that highlighted the issue.

In July 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Trayvon Martin, sparking outrage in response to the verdict and later for a juror getting a book deal to discuss the case. After backlash, the book offer was revoked.

Pope Francis, the first Latin American and Jesuit pontiff, has opened up discussion about identity, equality and faith with his comments and actions.

In a highly publicized move, Sasheer Zamata was hired as a performer on "Saturday Night Live" in early 2014 after an outcry about the show's lack of diversity and not having a black female cast member in six years.

Stories that sparked discussions on race

Stories that sparked discussions on race

Stories that sparked discussions on race

Stories that sparked discussions on race

Stories that sparked discussions on race

Stories that sparked discussions on race

Stories that sparked discussions on race

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In the news: A conversation about race

The organization has challenged prominent restaurant owners and chains to address racial exclusion through new employment practices, which often involve actually formalizing hiring practices such as posting jobs internally first before going external or holding performance reviews.

Informality works against equity by making room for all kinds of problematic individual judgments, such as discrimination against applicants with non-European foreign accents. The lack of rules is in itself a kind of policy.

A good example is Tom Colicchio, the owner of Craft and a host of "Top Chef." He has a combination of formal employment practices and full intention to build an integrated workforce.

Saru Jayaraman of ROCUnited notes that Colicchio "has a good reputation among workers in the industry for being a conscientious employer in this regard, and diners in his restaurants get a visibly different experience of the workforce."

An employer's clear intention to make room for people of color and willingness to apply that intention to recruitment, hiring, training and promotion of employee is the combination that enables real change.

The second thing we need to create genuine racial equity is to look at the impact of our institutional practices. When the rules of an institution are written down, we call them policies, but unwritten rules also shape institutions, in the form of repeated individual behavior, traditions, rituals or common approaches to problems.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for the NFL to take a stand against owner Dan Snyder -- who insists on preserving a team name that many consider racially insensitive --the way the NBA did against Donald Sterling. Snyder has continued to defend his recalcitrance in the name of "tradition" and to prove his lack of animus toward Native people by establishing a foundation.

If I stretch, I can accept that Snyder has no real animus toward Native Americans. Yet, the fact is that stereotypical sports mascots dehumanize the people they represent. Holding onto such a symbol bolsters an image of Native people on which other people negatively act.

Lastly, we have to recognize that people who have been marginalized need power to generate racial equality. The tools that create the presence of equity, not just the absence of hostility, have little chance of being implemented in situations where people of color are not organized for collective power.

This worked in Minneapolis, when the Education Equity Organizing Collaborative, a coalition of communities of color, pressed the school board to conduct a racial impact review of proposed school closings. In a rare reversal, the analysis led them to cancel the closing of a community school serving Somali students and to expand the school options available to Native Americans.

Now, the Minneapolis Board of Education has adopted a policy of conducting impact analysis on all decisions that affect student learning and resource allocation. None of that would have happened if communities of color weren't organizing themselves.

If we want racial equity, we have to want that kind of power-building, too. As we debate issues such as voting rights and affirmative action, the effect on a community's ability to assert its interests has to be part of our calculation of what makes good policy.

Stay in touch!

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As a nation, we've come a long way on race, as evidenced by the fact that Sterling was not only condemned by individuals but also sanctioned by an institution.

There's nothing stopping us from using these news stories to launch a forward-looking, highly effective, unifying approach to our persistent racial problems.

We can generate fairness -- not just punish hostility -- if we have the courage to be explicit, focus on the rules and their impact and encourage power building among people of color.

That's what it means to be brave. It's an American virtue. We can feel encouraged to see it in action every day, and we should never stop pushing for more.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Rinku Sen.